Hi, On Fri, 13 Apr 2007 18:45:04 +0100 Neil Bothwick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Apr 2007 10:46:42 -0500, Fabio wrote: > > > Well, when I started with Gentoo Linux almost a year ago, I emerged > > --sync more than twice per week. I never experimented any damage or > > error. > > I have a system here that rsyncs with three other computers every hour > and the disk is still good after several years, so the traffic > from a paltry portage sync should do nothing but give the disk a > little healthy exercise. I like this theory. I think bad blocks on HD's (and I guess noone here is talking about flash disks or writable DVD media) occur almost independent of usage. So if bad blocks occur, there might be a big chance that it happens in a portage sync simply because there's a lot of file writing/deleting and thus there's a bigger chance that it happens in that moments. If that was true, it is likely that the errors hit portage's files with a probability that corresponds to the percentage of sync (and due to the "test": emerge) I/O vs. general IO. On a gentoo system, there's probably a lot of disk I/O simply because of portage. This might explain why there's that feeling that a sync might hurt. And, the good side of things: If this theory holds valid, the errors are likely to hit portage -- not all that bad, a resync and everything's fine again :-) The harddisk will cure the problem by allocating spare sectors (as long as available). -hwh -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
